


5, 4, 3, 2, 1

by everlarklane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1950s, Gen, London, Muggle London, Murder, Pre-Hogwarts, Serial Killers, Thames River, mack the knife, tfw a muggle girl stands up to you and freaks you out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 12:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12342411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everlarklane/pseuds/everlarklane
Summary: Lucius Malfoy is the ultimate predator and the perfect pureblood. On the tail end of the 1950s, he finds himself prowling the streets of muggle London as the latest terrifying serial killer. To him, however, it's just muggle baiting.Until he runs into a muggle girl who threatens to unbalance his entire world.





	5, 4, 3, 2, 1

 

Torchlight scattered where it struck the white-blond locks of the pureblood, following him as if it were a particularly enamoured kneazle. The thick smell of animalistic fear tickled his nose buds as he moved along the darkened streets with the grace and poise of someone extensively taught in the art of high society. However, instead of the usual laced tables and elegant, rich wines he usually spent his nights with, he found himself prowling among the animals some lower folk considered humans. 

No pureblood he could recollect ever smelt so surely of fear as these did. To think it only took a handful of cullings to inspire such delicious panic…

Ah, but he was getting ahead of himself. He couldn’t let the sheep scatter before he’d had his full. 

Adjusting his robes slightly, light gray eyes landed on the dark curls of some muggle girl, her skirts entirely too high and hair shorn entirely too low. It was disgusting, the level muggles sank. How any muggle loving fool could see anything in the beasts…

Well. Regardless. No cat ever caught the mouse by simply thinking about the prey’s flaws. 

Finally, the muggle made a mistake. Waving off her friends, she took off through the damp dusk, wrapping thin, brittle-looking arms around her chest. Adjusting his gloves, he pulled his wand smoothly from the holster on his hip, relishing in the all-too-familiar sound of polished wood against leather. 

He cast a stinging hex first, lip curling with mixed disgust and euphoria as the muggle girl began dancing back and forth, a cry falling from reddened lips as she looked wildly around. He followed it up with another hex, and then a jelly legs for a brief second before casting the counter curse. 

“Who’s there?”

He scoffed silently at her words, rolling his wand between two fingers as she took off at a run, hindered by the shoes she wore— he’d heard his fiancée call them ‘stiletto heeled operas’ before, if his appraisal was correct. 

Minor hex, curse, jinx, spell— he cast them, slowly at first and then faster and faster until she was sobbing, begging for her invisible tormentor to leave her alone. Her fear tasted salty, sweet, euphoric in a way the witches at school never did. Perhaps it was the power, the knowledge that no matter what she did, she could not win. 

He was the ultimate predator and she an insignificant, useless prey. 

A pain curse, then a particularly foul ‘light’ charm that explosively healed the wounds from the cutting curse he’d used liberally on her before. She screamed, falling to her knees as at once the overpowered healing spell forced her wounds shut. 

“What do you want?” she finally shouted, lamp-like brown eyes somehow finding his in the shadows. “Why me? Why now?”

He didn’t answer. He was no rookie, out for his first bout of muggle baiting. 

“Are you the…” she broke off, unable to say the words. “I— the serial killer? Are you here to kill me?”

_ A bold one,  _ he mused, casually lobbing a curse at her that scraped the skin from her knees. He tasted her pain, her fear as she cried and cursed uselessly. 

“Of course,” she said. His ears perked up. “Of course this happens now, huh, God?” 

He paused, his next spell dying on his tongue. What on Earth was she on about? 

He’d never had a prey  _ monologue _ , let alone  _ ignore  _ him. 

“This couldn’t have happened at a worse time,” she spat, ripping her eyes from where they’d been focused on his general location in the shadows. “Why can’t you let me be happy, huh?” 

_ What on Earth…? _

“As if I haven’t had enough shite to deal with in my life!” she said, shouting now as she struggled and failed to pull herself to her feet. He couldn’t help but wince as she fell down, knees squelching with blood. Then, suddenly she was facing him, a finger pointed directly at him even though he  _ knew  _ she couldn’t see him. “And you!” 

He drew back instinctively. 

“I just wanted to go to my sister’s baby shower but oh, no, I can’t have that,” she said, untangling her curls as she clawed through them viciously with stressed hands. “I have to be stalked and harassed by an invisible, chickenshit little monster.”

Fury rose up in his throat at her words, but before he could act, she was continuing. 

“If you can do this in the shadows, no doubt you could take me down in the light,” she said, throwing a stone at him. It landed harmlessly right in front of him, but he couldn’t stop the flinch. “Unless you are afraid of little old me.” 

He prided himself in his self control. His pureblood etiquette, cursed into him since before he could walk. He, the pride of his Hogwart’s house, he, the one who would bring true glory to his family name. 

Before he realized what he was doing, green light, bright as sunlight on a cold, clear winter day, as violent as lightning in the sky, ripped through his wand and into her body. 

She was still.

Breathing heavily, he stared at her still body with a sort of shock before shakily pocketing his wand. 

A muggle. An animal. 

That’s all she was. 

Limply, cautiously, he trotted forward as if she would rise from the dead, defiant of even death’s cold hands. He knew better than any the strength of the Killing Curse and knew she was dead. 

And yet, he hesitated before transfiguring her into a stone to sink to the bottom of the Thames later. There was an uneasiness in his spine as he slowly rose, pocketing her body. Never had he been defied so. To be done so by one so low…

She must have been some sort of witch, he decided, untrained and untaught. Perhaps a bastard of a pureblood family. There was no other explanation. 

For a moment, he stood in the damp street, the lights glittering wetly against the pavement and against his hair as the disillusionment spell faded. His eyes caught one of the puddles and he couldn’t but appraise his countenance— proud features, befitting of his status as the head of one of Britain’s richest pureblood families. A pointed, aristocratic nose, regal grey eyes, thick locks of the whitest blond hair— none could deny their birth. And yet—

Those eyes were filled with hidden fear, his hair disheveled by the wind, and pale skin flushed with anger. 

Enough. Ripping his eyes away from the dirty water, recasting his spell, he disappeared back into the shadows, the thought of his warm bed and house elves waiting for him with rich red wine propelling him forward into the night. He had time for another stalk, one more satisfying, he was sure, but exhaustion weighed down his bones. 

Deep in his robes, the girl’s transfigured body seemed to send yet another spike of cold down his spine.

He hurried towards the river, longing for the warmth of a fire and freedom from the muggle girl’s mocking words, a growing determination to prove her wrong kindling inside of him.

He was not afraid. 

Teeth bared— with anger, fear, an outsider could not tell— he was swallowed by the night. 

**Author's Note:**

> Beater 2: Tony
> 
> Mack the Knife- Bobby Darin (1950s)
> 
> Optional prompt picks:  
> 9\. (emotion) fear  
> 11.(dialogue) "This couldn't have happened at a worse time."  
> 12.(restriction) No character names


End file.
